Julian Price Campground. Milepost 297.0 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

Other views of the depot: Cambria Depot in Black & White | A Very Merry Depot

Blooms on the trees in front of the Baptist Church on West Main in Christiansburg, Virginia.

Dave’s table saw belonged to his great grandfather. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have something that belonged to my great grandfather. Last spring, I visited the family cemetery and what was left of the mill that my great grandfather ran near Abbeville, South Carolina. It was like magic, like time didn’t matter. I don’t know that Dave’s so sentimental about his saw.

I love finding old gems when I’m cleaning out the old archive closet. This was taken in the spring of 2005 in Floyd County along with Blue Ridge Parkway . I had processed it before, but I was never really satisfied with the outcome.

The raw material isn’t super great. I’ve learned a lot in 5½ years, particularly about the necessity of a good tripod and having bracketed images to work from, but I’ve also learned a couple of things about post processing and I think I’m finally pretty satisfied with the result.

I’d love to give processing notes, but I manhandled it to thoroughly (and often in circles) that I would’ve had to take notes. Which I did because I didn’t start out knowing that the result would amount to anything.

I just dug up some photos from last summer at Linville Gorge in North Carolina. It was an awesome day and a really beautiful area. We definitely need to spend some time in the area next spring. Here is a link to information on this nice little area: TrailHead Finder. There are a handful of little walks in the neighborhood and they dinfinately look like they’re worth checking out.

The trail to the top of Big House Mountain definitely has a bit of variety. You start out cutting through fields of private property (it’s okay, you’re allowed) and end up on the top of Big House lunching next to what I guess is an abandoned maintenance building for a radio tower.

If you’d like to scurry up this 6½ miler just outside of beautiful Lexington, check out the detailed listing on TrailHeadFinder.com

The little hump in the mountain ridge just to the right of center in this photo is called the “buffalo” and is a landmark in Floyd County, Virginia along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Tonight was a nice night to watch the sun set over it.

This is a nice spot and doesn’t go unnoticed, particularly in the autumn, by throngs and people. I had set my camera and tripod up at the overlook featuring the view that you see above. I had set my camera to wait 12 seconds and then automatically take 5 bracketed shots each time I triggered the remote.

While waiting for the camera to take its sequence of shots, a man and his wife drove up. Stopping in the road, the man ran up beside me with his compact camera, discharged the onboard flash and took a picture of the setting sun. He then looked at me, smirked, and asked me if I were just waiting for my camera to take the picture itself. He then chuckled and got back into his car.

Definitely not the strangest conversation I’ve had while taking pictures, but definitely odd.

As a side note, this picture is completely unprocessed (except of course converting it from RAW to JPG and resizing to upload). I actually picked it from my set because I don’t have time to really do any processing work tonight and was focusing on multiple exposures for blending (lots of processing time) when I was out shooting.

I’ve always loved the cliffs around the New River. They’re so dramatic. This was taken this evening. The sunset was super short and I only made it to the river in time to get a nice picture by studying my Garman while sitting in a church parking lot and aiming my car for the blue bits on the map. I think it worked out well though.

I will come back and explain a bit more about how this is processed, I think. For now it is time for bed. G’night.